The recently appointed managing director of CDI AndersElite’s in the UK plans to change the company’s culture as part of efforts to integrate the company into the overall CDI organisation.

Outlining his plans, Ed Zetusky, who took up his position with the built environment recruiter in October, said he intended to change the company’s culture from “sales-driven recruitment” to “more solutions-driven”, and one “that understands what we can offer from across CDI”.

Clients were increasingly looking for partners who help them to drive profits rather than just cut costs, he added, and greater integration of the UK company within CDI was a case of the group “being more than the sum of its parts”.

Zetusky, also managing director of Anders’ Australian operation, said one strand of the closer integration called for project management for the firm’s MSP (managed services provider) activity to be carried out in the US. However, the local support to clients, relationship management and recruitment would continue to be carried out in the UK or Australia.

Zetusky said: “We are going to leverage the whole CDI network, though it will be serviced by local offices.” This was part of “a global deal that CDI and its companies could offer customers”, he added.

Key to this was a newly created national accounts team, said Zetusky. “These are people who are going to be trained in CDI’s overall offering, giving them a much broader view than a regional person. The members of the team will talk to clients about overall strategy, what works and what doesn’t work, about their biggest challenges, and whether we can do an analysis and provide a solution.”

To improve “alignment” between different parts of the CDI organisation, some UK-based staff were being sent to the US to attend meetings, with some US staff coming to the UK.

In its latest quarterly results, CDI Corporation, Anders’ parent company, reported revenue of $249.4m (£159.29m).

Zetusky said that while he believed the construction market is going to recover, he wanted to reduce the UK company’s reliance on it by diversifying into other areas. These include pharmaceuticals, power, infrastructure and aerospace.

Anders has already dipped a toe in the water by launching an IT division in London in November, added Zetusky. This was “hiring like gang busters”, he said, as it looked to grow within financial services, particularly cyber security, and within Anders’ existing customer base.